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Editorial: Human Rights Day Looks To Brighter Future

Although today is the 20th anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the theme for this year’s celebration of International Human Rights Day, Working For Your Rights, has its emphasis on the future and on identifying the challenges that lie ahead, according to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights at the United Nations.

Despite the achievements of the last 20 years, there still will be plenty of challenges.

In fact, looking at the 20 achievements the Office of the High Commissioner lists on its website shows that most of the “achievements” are in the realm of setting goals, commencing talks, recognizing issues and setting agendas. For instance, consider these.

• Economic, social, cultural, civil and political rights and the right to development “are recognized as universal, indivisible, and mutually reinforcing rights of all human beings.”

• Human rights “have become central to the global conversation” about peace and security.

• Women’s rights are now “acknowledged as fundamental human rights.”

• There is a global “consensus” that violations of human rights should not go unpunished.

• There has been a “paradigm shift” recognizing the rights of people with disabilities and their right to participate equally in all parts of life.

• The rights of lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender individuals “have been placed on the international agenda.”

Of course this things must first be acknowledged as appropriate goals or even topics of conversation before they can become reality, but we must admit that globally we live in a world that still refuses to grant equality in many meaningful ways.

Girls in Pakistan still are harassed for trying to attend schools. Female medical students can be raped and murdered on public transportation in India. Syria is torn apart by ruling party and dissenters, effectively precluding self-determination for the county’s citizens. Omar al-Bashir, president of Sudan, remains defiant of demands he stand trial in the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes and genocide in the Darfur region of his country.

Even where specific legal achievements have been reached, it is tragically easy to count off occasions where laws have been ignored.

Consider this point offered by the high commissioner’s office: “Additional explicit protections in international law now exist covering, among others, children, women, victims of torture, persons with disabilities, and regional institutions. Where there are allegations of breaches, individuals can bring complaints to the international human rights treaty bodies.” One does not need to go abroad to find exceptions, especially when so-called international treaties and “universal” agreements are denied by individual countries.

In fact, one of the main recommendations of the Vienna Declaration and Program of Action adopted in 1993 called for the ratification of the Convention of the Rights of the Child by 1995. Two countries still have not ratified the convention: Somalia and the United States.

So we celebrate this 20th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights with perhaps less cheer than the high commissioner might like. But there are bright spots.

Last week, the world marked the awarding of the United Nations Human Rights Prize to six winners: ardent campaigners for the rights of those with hearing loss and those of short stature, the Mexican Supreme Court of Justice, the former president of the Morocco Association for Human Rights, an anti-slavery campaigner from Mauritania and Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani school girl the Taliban failed to assassinate.

These people and the court will receive their medals today at UN Headquarters in New York.

In announcing the awards Thursday, High Commissioner Navi Pillay noted that “deplorable, large-scale violations of international human rights law” have occurred at times and that the response of the international community has been “too slow, too divided, too short-sighted — or just plain inadequate.”

“We can and must do better,” she stressed, according the UN. “The Vienna Declaration should be viewed as a blueprint for a magnificent construction that is only half built. It should be viewed as a living document that can and should continue to guide or actions and goals.”